'One Piece' Sets Up Luffy's Next Big Power Boost

One Piece knows how any big shonen showdown goes. When your hero has their back up against a wall, you let them get beaten down before a new power boost builds them back up. These days, One Piece is doing just that with Monkey D. Luffy, and audiences were teased with his next power boost.

Now, it's just a matter of whether Luffy can tap into the technique before all his stamina runs out.

Over the weekend, One Piece rolled out a new episode, and it was there fans saw Luffy fall into trouble. The hero is back in the Mirro-World with Charlotte Katakuri, and he's hoping to defeat the Sweet Commander. However, the towering baddie is as powerful as ever, and he isn't pulling punches.

As the episode continued, fans watched as Luffy took hit after hit, but the boy knows responding with brute violence won't work. A scene sees the Straw Hat captain reflect on the teachings Silvers Rayleigh gave him, and the flashback prompts Luffy to do something crazy.

He closes his eyes mid-battle. No, really; Luffy decided it was time to fight blind.

While the decision may come off as crazy, One Piece fans know exactly why Luffy shut his eyes. Rayleigh promised the boy his Haki would reach new levels after fighting tough opponents, so the Straw Hat decided it was time to test the theory. Not only did Luffy make the fight harder on himself, but his vision loss forced him to use Haki to fight back. It seems the decision was made in the hopes Luffy's would unlock the very same Observation Haki which Katakuri uses to dodge blows. However, the captain has no such luck. Right now, the fighter is batting back at zero, but fans know it is only a matter of time before his Haki holdings pay out.

Are you ready to see Luffy tap into this new technique? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold.